Thursday, August 18, 2011

spunk and spunky

It's our last full day in the US after a (BrE) holiday/(AmE) vacationof nearly a month. I'd thought I'd catch up on blogging during this downtime, but I started to enjoy actually being on holiday/vacation. Imagine that!

As we rushed to get everything done before leaving my parents' house and my hometown, I asked Better Half to run across the street/road to the (AmE) drug store/(BrE) chemist'sto buy a (AmE & BrE) greeting/(BrE) greetingscard for my soon-to-be nine-year-old niece. He came back with a very (orig. AmE in this sense*) cute card that was arguably marketed at a younger age group, explaining (with alarm in his voice) that he couldn't bear to buy a (orig. AmE) tweenie-appropriate (not his words) card addressed to 'a spunky girl'.

An hour or so later, we searched with desperation for a place to have lunch with my parents. We'd checked in at the airport, but there is now nowhere in ROC to have anything but a cookie or a pretzel outside (of) the security zone, and our usual diner across the road had closed down. (We found later that JFK is no better--couldn't find a 'proper' restaurant in which to eat after collecting our luggage/before going to our foodless hotel. I blame Homeland Security. And, America, why don't you put sensible things in your airports after security? Like a drug store/chemist's where one could buy baby food and sunscreen in order to get around the 3-oz./100 ml rule? UK airports [orig. AmE i.t.s] rule, oh yeah!) We ended up at a local (orig. AmE i.t.s) chain restaurant about which the less said, the better. But it thrilled by being in the same (orig./chiefly AmE i.t.s) plaza (i.e. set of retail businesses sharing a [AmE] parking lot/[BrE] car park) as this gym:

Spunk came up, so to speak, in my last post, because the American Heritage Dictionary gave it as a synonym for gumption. And there I had the footnote:

* I've no doubt that some readers will find this definition humorous, as spunk is BrE slang for 'semen'. But the primary meaning in AmE (also found in BrE, and originating from a Scots/northern England dialect for 'spark') is 'Spirit, mettle; courage, pluck' (OED).

In the comments, a couple of US readers claimed familiarity with the 'semen' sense of spunk, but its use in US business names indicates that it is the 'spirit, mettle; courage, pluck' sense that is called to mind first in AmE. (My research has, however, led me to an adult entertainment business in Australia called "Spice and Spunk Strippers". You're welcome.) In BrE, the 'seminal fluid' meaning has been around since at least 1890, and the other meanings (of which there are many) have been around longer, but many of the other meanings (e.g. 'a spark', 'a match', 'a lively person') seem to be more rooted in northern dialects and may not have had much currency down south when the 'semen' meaning took off. Two meanings that aren't marked as dialectal in the OED are 'tinder' and 'One or other of various fungi or fungoid growths on trees, esp. those of the species Polyporus, freq. used in the preparation of tinder'--and perhaps it is that sense from which the 'semen' sense comes (here's a photo of the fungus, you can judge).

Spunky meaning 'Full of spunk or spirit; courageous, mettlesome, spirited' is not marked as dialectal in the OED, but some of the earliest citations seem to be Scottish. (Well the first one, Burns, definitely is, and the second one has the word lassie in it. For some reason the links to the OED sources aren't working for me.) There is no 'semen-y' meaning in the OED, but it certainly exists. The OED does include a 'US & dial' meaning 'Angry, irritable, irascible', but that's not a sense that I hear used, and the citations are all from the 19th century.

At any rate, the semen sense seems to have taken over British minds--or at least the minds of the under-50s, as far as I can tell. I'd be interested to hear whether people in other parts of the UK have the same impression of the spunk(y) situation. Americans, meanwhile, mostly use the word in with positive connotations--and with a definite feminine bias. Here are the top nouns that follow spunky in the Corpus of Contemporary American English:

So, this is yet another example of Americans innocently using words that sound "dirty" in BrE. And before you comment, please note that there is a £5 tax on this blog for typing fanny pack.***

Oh--and before I go:
If you've ever wondered what a Lynneguist sounds like (after 12 years of anglification), wonder no more! Patrick Cox's latest World in Words podcast is an interview with me about all sorts of things, like how my immigrant vowels have shifted, criticism-softening devices in BrE, and language and social class. He promises a part 2 after his holiday. I had a lovely time (that's me all Britified) speaking with him, as we have converse experiences--he's an Englishman living in the US. I hope it might be of interest to some of you too...

*There are several 'in this sense' originally-AmE items here, so henceforth I abbreviate 'in this sense' as 'i.t.s'.
** Quote: "You could blog about that."
*** Payable to: http://www.msf.org/

This AmE speaker has different connotations for "spunk" and "spunky". Spunky is entirely innocent, but spunk can elicit a juvenile giggle. It is a pretty widespread slang term for semen, even if it's less common than a couple others.

I always think of spunky as an "Our Gang" sort of word or as a synonym for plucky. Under the Learning Never Stops category, it was interesting to learn the BrE slang sense.By the way, your idiolect has overlays of southeastern British, but I would still never place it as anything other than AmE.

I don't know whether it's the result of reading too many Nancy Drew books in childhood, but my first understanding of spunk or spunky is the sense of pluck or gumption as well, though I am aware of the slang meaning.

As the anonymous poster pointed out, The Mary Tyler Moore Show made spunk a household word for a woman with an excess of gumption. I think it's a generational thing, though. I haven't heard any teens or younger use spunk or spunky.

In the film Down In The Valley a character describes a teenage girl as having spunk and her younver brother hopefully asks whether he has spunk too. Reading a British review/analysis, the writer substituted the word 'gumption' in his quote. Presumably to avoid any awkward connotations. As noted in the previous thread, I often hear spunk as a verb, as in 'to ejaculate'. Or more commonly 'spunked'.

I have memories from school some 35 years ago of a whole class of us pubescent English boys collapsing in giggles (much to the disgust of our teacher) at the references in Tom Sawyer to "spunk water". The meaning of (if I have it right) water in tree stumps is one you don't observe here.

England hosted two extremely popular Australian soap operas a day during the 1980s. There was so much prime time spunk being exchanged on the television that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the preconceived notions of the term, by the youth of that decade, had been replaced by a completely different definition.

Of course, I carefully chose "preconceived notion" because in the 1970s a friend of mine spat on the floor and declared "That's spunk!". As an independent and self-opinionated six year old I decided to ignore her.

In Australian English, the semen usage has spawned (so to speak) spunky, meaning sexy, and spunk, meaning a sexually attractive person. These terms have a slightly raunchy flavour to them, but are freely used in the mass media.

A spunk could be someone of either sex, and so could a 'spunk rat' I think. But a 'hunk of spunk' is most likely male. This latter expression was popularised by the TV comedy series 'Kath and Kim', but Google Books reveals it was in use in the 1980s.

And not just people under 50 I was born in East Anglia 64 years ago and the 'sementic' connotations of spunk are primary for me.There are quite a few terms where we are naughtier in the UK: a good example being "to knock [someone] up" (for wake, and I freely admit to an evil delight in telling my colleagues down here in TX about the noble profession of Knocker-Upper).btw I too have experiences of ROC: I lived for many years in Swillburg. Ah! I miss winters!

British Comedy's of the 80's and the forbidden phrase put me in mind of this scene from Filthy Rich and Catflap:

The boys are shown as orphan children in a Dickensian setting, above them is a portrait of a woman; it is implied they may be her children, and that she has died. Two men stand beside them in conversation, one indicates the portrait.

"But look doctor, surely you can see the resemblance? These young boys look just like my Fanny!"

Que guffaws of laughter from the studio audience.

In other news, I've discovered that my Americanised accent vanishes mere minutes after entering the UK (to be replaced by my native Welsh), as does my ability to put them on. It, returns in the airport Stateside. The reverse is not true, I can do a variety of British accents on either side of the pond. Very peculiar.

As a 60+ AmE speaker, I was book-familiar with 'spunk' in the fungus and tinder senses (see also, 'punk') from a relatively young age. 'Spunky' was clear enough from context in books like Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys. But 'spunk' as semen is solely from reading. I've never heard it used in that sense, in either the US or UK. Perhaps I'm living a sheltered life.

I'm curious... Somewhat satisfyingly, in your interview you said 'grain of salt' rather than 'pinch of salt'. According to http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/take-with-a-grain-of-salt.html, the latter is more common. Is there a BrE/AmE difference?

I don't know any young person in the UK that would think of anything but semen when they heard the word "spunk". There would be some pretty weird expressions if you had an american girl say "I'm full of spunk" to and English guy, I can tell you. lol

I'm 30 & BrE speaker. Although familiar with spunky as someone full of gumption I could not say they were full of spunk without laughing & we are so not going there with fanny as the AmE for bottom...

The British (i'm half Welsh (& half German ) but lived most of my life in the Westcountry) smuttiness must be a fairly recent thing as there used to be plenty of women called Fanny & men called Dick back in the day but I would have to snigger if I come across either name!!

However BrE always has been a lover (I'm thinking famously of certain Shakespeare plays) of wordplay particularly with double entendres (sp?) Although I always say: it's not that the mouth it comes out of but the mind it goes into [that's dirty minded]. Of course that in itself can be taken either way!

Certainly Fanny used to be the standard nickname for women christened Frances, and Dick for Richard. I suspect that Fanny went out of fashion, like other Victorian names, in the 20th century and the vulgar slang use has stopped it from coming back into favour like Daisy, Ruby etc. have. You do occasionally come across men called Dick (e.g. the TV presenter Dick Strawbridge).

Though I am not a native speaker of English, I am a big fan of it. By reading your blog everyday and other useful material online, I am now able to tell the difference between American English and British English better than an ordinary native speaker at both sides of the Atlantic. I did English for B.A. and Conference Interpreting for M.A. oh btw, I am from Shanghai, so hope to meet you when you would like to elucidate English(es) to Chinese learners next time you are in China. I heard your voice and really like it! Bruce Email: bruceleecx@hotmail.come